CHAPTER ONE
The morning I first see him is the morning I need it most.
I guess that’s sometimes how the universe works.
It ignores your requests time and time again until finally, when you’re about to throw in the towel and just give up, it delivers you that One Thing that keeps you hanging on. That One Thing that replaces your seething scowl with a spellbound smile. That One Thing that makes you absolutely certain that magic is more than a myth and that your Hogwarts acceptance letter will be arriving after all, just a couple decades late.
That One Thing that makes you twirl in your fuzziest bathrobe to old Taylor Swift songs, physically bursting with that giddy feeling you thought you’d outgrown years ago. That One Thing that shows you that despite all the angry, jaded words you’ve been spewing, love actually isn’t dead after all. It’s more alive than ever, and it’s been reborn just for you.
Maybe that One Thing is the dream job you land after being laid off. Maybe it’s the pregnancy after years of trying. Or the new friend who appears out of thin air when you need her most.
Or in my case, maybe it’s an English prince riding a white steed past your window.
Well, not a white steed, technically speaking. He’s riding a red double-decker bus that has an organic food delivery advertisement plastered across it—“NudeFoodMood.com.” (Symbolically seductive foreshadowing, perhaps?)
But it’s close enough to my fairy-tale fantasy and just about as enchanting an entrance as I could ask for in modern-day London.
The morning started out particularly poorly. I woke up with a backache from the droopy mattress and then stubbed my toe on the characterful bed frame of the North London flat that I’m renting.Characterfulis just the British way of saying “extremely old and probably broken.” I’ve learned this much since moving across the pond.
Rather than letting my stubbed toe simply be a stubbed toe, I naturally spiraled into a place where it’s a gigantic metaphor for my complete incompetence as an adult. What chance do I have of becoming a Fortune 500 CEO or shattering the glass ceiling if I can’t even roll off my mattress without maiming myself?
The negative self-talk gained steam when my crumpet got stuck in the toaster. I’ve taken a liking to crumpets as they seem more sophisticated, morecultured, than waffles even though they’re basically the same thing. I pried the crumpet out with a fork and shoved the mangled thing into my mouth while standing over the sink, full of unwashed dishes. More evidence of my utter incompetence.
Then a bulgy-eyed fly snuck into the flat, buzzing all around, nipping at my tea. I chased the fly around for a solid ten minutes,swatting it with unopened bank statements that trigger my stress levels, as all physical mail does. In the end, I won the war but at the cost of insect guts on my carpet and no motivation to vacuum.
So when I sat down at my clunky baroque desk and began sifting through “high-importance” emails on my work computer, I was questioning my entire life path with disappointingly cliched existential angst.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said yes to a six-month project in London and spontaneously moved to a new country by myself, even if it was an opportunity to fast-track my promotion and put an entire ocean between my ex and me. Maybe I should’ve stayed with Mateo and let him buy me that ring even though I didn’tjust know. Maybe I should give up on the idea that life or love will ever take my breath away again. Maybe I’m just a delusional thirty-one-year-old stuck in my millennial Neverland.
Maybenot too badis what adulthood is, and I’d better grow up and face the synthetic pop music, or I’ll wind up dying alone in this very flat, and no one will find my body until another tenant finally pieces together that the stench is more than the fishmonger next door.
I turned on my daily BBC news podcast, then promptly turned it off again as the host rattled off the headlines of unprecedented political discord and gang violence. Procrastinating reading my emails, I stared blankly out the window onto Upper Street, the bustling high street that emanates the little-village-in-a-big-city energy of Islington.
Upper Street is lined with bohemian boutiques, plant-filled cafés, and red telephone boxes repurposed into street artists’ studios. Narrow Tudor homes are cobbled together next to pitch-roofedVictorian properties and simple Georgian terraces, with silver birch trees and grassy squares providing some consistency of greenery. Weathered brick, slanted gables, and trash bags piled high on the stone sidewalks add a dose of authenticity to the cityscape. It feels like a movie set, which is precisely why I chose to live here.
But rather than scooping me into its romantic folds, Islington’s charm has exacerbated my isolation, reminding me that I don’t have someone to go with me to the single-screen cinema or help carry my groceries as I trudge back from Chapel Market, three tote bags full of produce, pastries, and peanut butter (to my immense relief, peanut butter hasn’t been nearly as difficult to find in the UK as I’d been warned).
Today’s sky is blotted with low clouds that look like they might lift soon. That’s how it goes here. The sun never seems too far away, keeping you believing it might show its face soon, but it can rarely be bothered.
My mood was as drab as the weather, and I needed something good to appear. Or someone.
And suddenly he’s there. Right there out my grilled window, seated on the top deck of a close-topped bus that’s waiting outside my flat at the St. Mary’s Church stop.
I live on the second floor—the first floor, according to the Brits—so the bus’s upper deck is just below my eye level, and I peer down at the gorgeous man.Mygorgeous man, as my mind immediately lays claim to him.
It’s like he chose his seat because he knew it would be directly in my line of sight. You can’t deny the subliminal tugs of fate.
Everything stops and starts and somersaults in simultaneous bliss. My calloused toes wiggle in anticipation, and the thrill worksits way up into my crumpet-filled belly, and up again into my black-and-blue heart that suddenly feels brand-new again. My fingers start dancing too, like they’re playing a perfectly tuned piano to my life’s soundtrack, which I haven’t heard until now but somehow already have memorized.
The bus is crowded with commuters, but I can only see one person. Everyone else fades away as extras.
He’s everything I hoped he’d be. So good looking that it actually hurts, and carrying himself with such a manly sort of grace. Dark and handsome, he looks to be tall too, dressed in a wool peacoat with a maroon scarf that exudes European sophistication. He has clean-cut, olive skin, his hair is slightly coiffed, and he’s reading a magazine that must be theEconomist, because he has that worldly look about him.
His profile could slice open the hardest heart—an aristocratic nose and a confident jawline with a slight softness in his chin that indicates he has a brilliant sense of humor and will laugh at all my jokes, even the ones that are ever so rarely not that great. Chemistry is coursing between us like electromagnetic waves. Only fifteen feet away, and I can basically hear his voice murmuring into my ear in his posh accent as we canoodle in bed while I snooze the alarm:“Morning, darling. Shall I fix us some brekkie whilst you draw a bath?”
He’s the ideal blend of Mr. Darcy and Cedric Diggory, and I start berating myself for ever dating anyone who fell short of this exquisite standard.
I’d guess he’s about my age but looks a bit older given how put together he is. Quite a contrast to my mismatched outfit of joggers and a shapeless blouse featuring a chocolate stain just beneath where the computer camera hits (I’ve really mastered the Zoom life).
